Timber!

     How did this happen? Twenty years ago I watched out my kitchen window teary-eyed as trees in the woods behind our house were pinched at their bases by heavy machinery and then toppled crashing to the ground. Like the song says, “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot . . .” only this time instead of a parking lot, they crammed cookie cutter houses in. Oh well, people need places to live.

     A few months later, we moved to another house, one with a wooded backyard. Nobody would be able to cut our trees down. Except us.

     On a breezy, cloudy March day, a man scaled up two of our 150’ Douglas Firs and a couple of Hemlock trees with a chainsaw dangling from a rope tied around his waist. I watched him harnessed to a tree that was swaying in the wind like a metronome--one last dance. I thought I was a tree hugger. How had I turned into the one signing the check to bring these trees down?

     In the seventeen years that we’ve lived in this house, we weathered many Northwest storms: windstorms, snow storms, even the Nisqually earthquake. But the ice storm on January 22, 2012 was the one that made us start questioning the wisdom of living “in the woods.”

Douglas fir branches bow under the weight of snow and ice.

   The ice storm hit our area hard. Throughout the night we heard branches snapping like gunshots followed by thunderous thuds on our roof and in our yard. We took shelter in our basement. Clearing the debris from our yard and roof took more than a week. The pile of branches along our curb ended up being almost 4 feet tall. We took load after load to the dump waiting in 30-minute lines with other trucks brimming with yard waste. (See January 18, 21, 22, and 28, 2012 posts.)

The pile of debri grows.

     Most of our debris came from the trees on the north side of the house After we cleared it all away, we realized that we had to replace the roof. We filed an insurance claim. We rigged some of the battered rain gutters and eventually replaced those as well.

     Weatherwise it was relatively calm until 2016 rolled around. On Thanksgiving, a windstorm hit. After a filling Thanksgiving meal, we stood in the driveway with our daughter Sarah and her boyfriend saying our goodbyes. John and I went inside and were turning off the lights to go to bed when the house shook with what sounded like an explosion.          

   We thought one of the trees fell on our house. Outside, we saw that it was a 15-20’ branch that fell.  It came down on the roof and then landed on my Camry. It was 11:15 at night, so we couldn’t see the full extent of the damage and we were worried about more branches coming down. We scurried back inside and considered ourselves lucky that the branch hadn’t hit us 15 minutes earlier.

     By the dawn’s early light, we checked our house and car. The house roof had a dent in it, but not a hole. The 250-lb branch must’ve hit the roof like a nail, then bounced off, landing on my car’s roof and rolling onto the hood. Somehow, it hadn’t broken the glass sunroof or the windshield. But there was a dent above the driver’s door, and also in the door. We get a lot of rain around here. Would it start leaking?

     The house roof didn’t seem to be leaking, but there’s a lot of insulation up in the attic. We called the company that put the “new” roof on and they sent someone out quickly. He inspected the damage and put a temporary patch of plastic over the dent to keep the rain out until they could fix it permanently.  We filed a property claim with our homeowner’s insurance.

     I took the 2001 Camry to three body shops for estimates. The news was not good. All three said that the repairs were going to end up costing a little more than the car was worth, so our insurance company would probably declare it totaled.

     One of the estimators told me that the damage was not structural, just cosmetic. She suggested I might want to repair it myself. Since the car is a Toyota and may have another 100,000 miles in it, that’s what I did. I sanded the dents down and painted it so that it won’t rust. We didn’t file an insurance claim on it.

    We had been working toward selling some of our cars and getting another newer model car for me. The plan had been for the Camry to go to Sarah anyway, just not damaged. We donated her Audi to Public Television, and then gave her the Camry with instructions not to open the sunroof because we aren’t sure it will close again.

    I finally switched my Toyota loyalty off and made up my mind about which vehicle I wanted. For the second time in our lives, we bought a brand new car—a zippy Mazda CX-5 in rich, lustrous Soul Red Crystal!

My new baby! Zoom! Zoom!

Our garage already has two cars in it which is why we are trying to shrink our fleet. So, I parked my sporty new Mazda SUV in the driveway.

     Two weeks later, on February 5, Super Bowl Sunday, Sarah and her boyfriend came to visit again. It started snowing heavily. We loved watching it sift down outside while we were warm and cozy inside. As the snow got deeper, 10” worth, they decided to stay with us overnight rather than attempt to drive back to Seattle.

     Our winter reverie snapped back to reality with a loud boom and the house shaking, again. We ran to look outside and found two of our cars buried in branches. The branches missed the new Mazda by 3."

Near miss!

There was also a 30’ branch on the roof covering half our house. It was from the same tree that dropped the branch on the Camry.

Buried classic BMW.

Branch on roof stretches across two bedrooms.

     We moved our dogs out of the bedroom under the trees. The four of us humans spent the night trying to fall asleep in the basement but keeping an ear open for more falling branches. This was getting old.

     In the morning, we unearthed the two cars buried under branches and removed the covers that protect them from tree sap.

The classic 1985 BMW had cracks streaking down the windshield. The branches hit hard enough to knock the computer out of the roof. The roof and hood were dented.

     My son’s Honda Accord, a survivor of many brutal winters at WSU in Pullman, WA, had the entire back window shattered. The center rear brake light was also destroyed and the frame around the window had dented under the weight of the branch.

     I was hopeful that we could just replace the window and fix the brake light ourselves. It was an entertaining, rainy drive to a Safelite AutoGlass with a shower curtain taped across the back of the car. I was following John and could tell when he turned the defroster on because the shower curtain poufed outward like a bubble. He made it most of the way to the shop before the painter’s tape let loose and the shower curtain started flapping in the wind and rain.

     The window technician told us he couldn’t replace the glass because with the dent in the frame, the glass wouldn’t seat properly. John nodded in agreement. He had predicted this. But, the Safelite guy was great. He vacuumed the glass pieces out and replaced the shower curtain with a more professional temporary back window.

     I followed John to our favorite body shop, Abra, for an estimate. (We’d never had a favorite body shop before.) We filed insurance claims for the Honda, and the BMW, but worried that they’d be declared totaled because they are old cars.

     We decided the trees had to go. It was just too much. We were constantly worried about the danger looming from those trees. We couldn’t park our cars in the driveway. Every time the wind picked up, I was fearfully watching the trees. If it got blustery, I got the dogs out and left the house.

     Some background: Our neighborhood was built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The idea was that the houses were built to blend into nature and become a part of the natural forest, a la Frank Lloyd Wright. As many older trees as possible were left in place during construction. That’s how Manorwood was created and it still has its wooded feel, due to the homeowners’ association covenants.

    To have a tree with a diameter of more than 6” removed, it has to be approved by the board of the Manorwood Homeowners’ Association. Getting approval is difficult if not impossible. You have to hire an arborist to assess the health of the tree. The effects on neighbors is taken into account, as well as how it affects the forest density and how much light your property receives. You must provide a map of all the trees on the property. New trees have to replace the removed ones.

   Most of the stories that I’ve heard about getting approval for tree removal did not have happy endings. All I’ve ever heard are tales of people cutting trees down and then having liens put on their homes, or being fined $600 per tree removed.

    The neighbor who shares the property line with the problem trees is also a board member. He encouraged us to go to the next homeowner’s meeting to talk about the trees. We went and the woman who makes the tree decisions was not exactly sympathetic. When we told her that our roof was damaged and we had three cars totaled, she told us we should park our cars in the RV lot. We were trying to be positive, so I didn’t ask her if we should park our roof in the RV lot too.

     Instead I went home and filled out the request to remove trees. I mapped the trees on our property (we would still have more than 20 trees left after removing the dangerous ones). I prepared a 35-page report documenting with photos the damage done by the trees since 2012. We hired arborists to examine the trees and give us their findings. At least two trees were diseased. Most of the branches left on the trees were on one side--over our house. I included that in the report. Our neighbor had several board members come by and look at the trees hovering over our house. One was growing only 4 feet from our bedroom.

Douglas fir 4 feet from our bedroom.

Douglas fir leaning toward our house.

   We submitted the report and waited. If they didn’t approve it, we would work with our neighbor to get the covenants changed to allow for dangerous trees to be removed. He wanted to get a petition started. John and I also talked about moving if we didn’t get approval.

Fortunately our request was approved. I think the tree committee realized that if they denied us and someone got injured or killed by one of those trees they could be legally liable.

    We worked with our neighbor to get bids on removing the trees and settled on an experienced, affordable company, Foothills Tree Service & Stump Grinding. I called utilities companies to come out and mark where our gas lines, cable lines, and telephone lines were.

     And that is how I came to be sitting in my car across the street and up the hill from my house watching those stately trees that I loved come down. It was a bittersweet experience.

     I focused on the skills of the tree cutters. I’ve always been fascinated by trades people who are great at their jobs, and these men were experts. What they were doing—climbing 150 feet up trees that were swaying in the wind—in a harness with a chain saw was extremely risky. The guys below were also in potential danger from above, and from feeding a chipper. Coordination between those in the sky and those on earth was crucial.

Tree cutter in the center of the photo.

     They were totally comfortable with their work, doing their jobs automatically, joking easily. I, on the other hand, was holding my breath a lot! I watched the climber throw a rope over upper branches, tie it to lower branches, start up the chainsaw, cut the branch, slowly spin it into a perfect position to lower it below the roof line, and then let it drop to the ground. It was a narrow strip of a target between our house and fence yet he managed to hit it without taking out his co-workers, our houses, fences, sheds, or shrubs.

Note how tall the trees are over the
 lightpost and our  2-story house.

The top of one tree ready for the chipper.

     Questions swirled in my head as I watched them. How do you tie a knot that holds a 250-lb branch, yet releases easily when it needs to? How do you keep the saw from binding up? How do you make sure you don’t cut a rope or yikes, your harness? How do you know how high to climb before you cut the very top of the tree off? I didn’t know the answers, but watching them work was mesmerizing.

     What do they do when the chainsaw runs out of gas? Lower it on the rope, and get one of the other guys to fill ‘er up, then pull it back up. How do you make sure you don’t slide back down the tree? Have spikes on your shoes, and against instinct, lean away from the tree trunk, even when your arms are pushing a 3-ft chunk of cut tree trunk in the opposite direction, away from you.

    During a donut break, I listened to their stories. Most of them had been cutting trees all their lives. They had learned their craft from fathers and grandfathers before them. One told me that his grandfather was still climbing trees when he was 65 years old.

     When I told them I could never do their jobs, they teased me and told me to step into the harness, they’d teach me. I think I’ll stick to fighting battles with a pen (or laptop). When those chainsaws started buzzing, neighbors from up and down our street came out to watch, and to congratulate me on winning over the homeowner’s association. For now, in my tiny neck of woods, I’m a suburban legend.

Laura Keolanui Stark is starting to trust trees again. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Girl Gets Car

Buying a new car has made me nostalgic about the cars I’ve owned over the years. I know cars are machines—metal and rubber, nuts and bolts, and yet I form such an emotional attachment to them. Each one has taken me on journeys and taught me lessons. Each one has a special place in my memories.

It was 1976 and I was going to be a senior in college at Louisiana State University, when I moved out of the dorms and into an off-campus apartment. There was a bus that shuttled back and forth between Tigerland and campus, but I needed a car, mostly to get to the grocery store.

My family had moved to Fairfax, Virginia and I went there during Christmas break and summer. My summer jobs didn’t pay much, so at the end of summer, Dad bought me a light blue ‘71 Volkswagen Squareback—a little station wagon. I named him Joey, as in Joy wagon.  He even had a little smile in the front where the trunk was.

      I was delighted, but worried. I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift and I would have to drive more than a thousand miles back to Baton Rouge.

Learning to drive an automatic had not come naturally to me. Now I had to learn a different kind of driving, in a week. Dad was confident that I’d learn how to shift. I wasn’t, but I didn’t have a choice.

My brother Bob was my teacher and he was excellent—patient and with a sense of humor.  He took me up to the elementary school and had me practice letting the clutch out slowly without much gas, just to feel when first gear would catch. I stalled Joey. I made him lurch. I ground gears putting him into reverse. Eventually I drove laps around and around an island in the parking lot while Bob coached me.

In explaining downshifting, Bob forgot to tell me to let the clutch out slowly for that also, so it was a good thing we had our seatbelts on or our heads would’ve hit the dashboard. We laughed, but it made an impression. I didn’t make that mistake again.

It didn’t take long before he had me practice stopping and starting on hills, feeling just how far to let the clutch out without stalling the car, and setting the emergency brake in case. Dad was right. I did learn how to drive a stick in time to drive my “new” car back to school. My boyfriend flew up north to help me drive down to Louisiana.

Fairfax, Virginia to Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Dad also gave me a Chevron credit card, but I still took the bus back and forth to campus. He called me in disbelief because my gas bill was often less than $20 a month. I kept a $10 bill in my glove compartment. If money got tight (which was the norm back then), I knew I could fill Joey’s tank with $10.

Joey saved my life once in a very dangerous situation. My boyfriend’s family lived in New Orleans. One Friday night after work, I drove from Baton Rouge to New Orleans for the weekend. On a long dark stretch of I-10, there was a causeway that spanned a bayou.

 
Joey started pulling to one side.  I was pretty sure I had a flat tire (left,rear), but it was a long causeway and it doesn't get much darker than a Louisiana swamp. I slowed down and continued on. At the end of the elevated causeway on dry land, the stupid boyfriend had told me to take a shortcut to his house.

The shortcut was through one of New Orleans' housing projects. I pulled up to a red stop light and could hear that I had a flat, but I wasn’t about to get out of the car in that neighborhood. That’s when a group of black men came up to Joey and started pounding on my hood and peering through the window yelling at me. Maybe they were just trying to tell me I had a flat. I wasn’t sticking around to find out. The light was still red, but Joey and I peeled out of there!

Instead of showing some concern for me and apologizing for telling me to drive through the projects when I got to his house, stupid boyfriend yelled at me for driving on the rim and being a chicken. The rim wasn’t damaged. Stupid boyfriend wasn’t my boyfriend much longer.

I liked bragging to guys that my car didn’t have a carburetor. It had fuel injectors in its suitcase engine. They usually didn’t believe me until I opened the engine up in the back of the car.

Other than the fuel injectors, Joey was a very basic, no-frills car. The engine didn't have a radiator. It was air cooled. Someone stole the VW emblem off the hood not long after I got him.

He leaked oil. He leaked in the rain. The floor was rusted out so that there were holes that you could see the road through. It was sort of like driving Fred Flintstone’s prehistoric car.

At one point Joey’s horn started randomly honking, so I waved to people as if they were my friends to head off any road rage.  I figured out how to pop the center cover of the steering wheel off with a screwdriver and bend the wire in there so that it wouldn’t touch metal—that’s what made the horn beep.

One night John and I went to a disco and parallel parked perpendicular to a row of cars. While we were dancing, someone else was backing into Joey leaving a huge dent in the driver's door. Somehow (without the help of Google) I figured out how to pop the dent out by sticking a plumber's plunger on the dent and pulling. Lesson learned. To this day I won't park behind a row of cars like that.

 Joey was a two door car, but you could fold the back seats down. That sure came in handy because I loaded Joey up with all my stuff to move to five different apartments including Married Students Housing after John and I got married.

Joey was my transportation after graduation to my first grownup job as an advertising copywriter. I carpooled with Marian one of the artists.

John changed Joey’s oil in the apartment parking lot after backing it up onto the curb so he could lie down under the car. I got my first ticket in that car. You couldn’t downshift into first gear in Joey unless you stopped. If I was in a rush, I’d just put the clutch in leaving it in second and brake pretty hard, but not completely stop. The ticket was for making a rolling “California stop” at a stop sign.

In 1981 we moved to Hawaii so John could get his PhD at the University of Hawaii. It was summer when we drove 1800 miles from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles and then shipped Joey over the Pacific Ocean. There wasn’t any GPS back then. Our navigation system consisted of relying on AAA maps with Trip Tiks which were close-up maps showing construction held together with a spiral binding like a skinnier stenographer’s notebook. 

We didn’t pre-book any motels. We just looked for Vacancy signs at hotels/motels when we stopped for the night.

It was an eventful trip. Our first stop was San Antonio. Our high rise hotel was across the street from the Alamo. The only view we remember of The Alamo was from the curb we sat on with our suitcases when the hotel caught on fire. John had just started a shower when I heard firetrucks wailing. I called the front desk. They assured me there was no cause for alarm.

One of my grandfathers was a fire chief.  When I looked out the window and saw the firemen laying hoses, I knew this was serious. I told John to get out of the shower. We had to evacuate. Someone set off the fire alarms. We grabbed our bags, directed people away from the elevators and to the stairs, and then rushed down six flights. Luckily it was a small fire so after the firefighters put it out we went back to our room.

Our route: Baton Rouge to Los Angeles with stops in San Antonio, El Paso, Phoenix, and then Los Angeles. 

The next leg of the trip was to El Paso. It was a long, flat 500 miles of I-10 rolling across parched land. Joey only had a radio, no tape player, but we had made mixed cassette tapes of our favorite songs and had a small battery powered tape player that we listened to because it was impossible to get radio stations out there.

       Joey also didn’t have air conditioning so we opened all the windows and pointed the triangular vent windows at our faces, but it just felt like we were in a convection oven. When it’s close to 100 degrees it’s still scorching even if it’s a dry heat. Despite the hot dry air blowing on us, we kept smelling gas and Joey just didn’t feel right.

When we pulled into El Paso we checked into our hotel room and then looked through the yellow pages for a VW dealer. They discovered the reason for the persistent gas smell. Two of the fuel injectors were broken and spraying gasoline all over the engine. The only reason we didn’t catch on fire out there in the middle of nowhere (way before cell phones) was because so much gas was spraying they said it kept putting the fire out. Luck was on our side twice. They were able to replace the fuel injectors right away. We were on a tight schedule. We had to get Joey on the ship to Hawaii in time, and we also had plane tickets to Hawaii.

The next day we headed for Phoenix. All the cross country road trips I’d made with my military family, had taught me a thing or two, and I took that Girl Scout motto, “Be Prepared” seriously. In addition to our suitcases, I’d packed a box with a gallon jug of water and some food. It was a good thing. An 18-wheeler had jack knifed on I-10. The police diverted us onto a two-lane highway somewhere in New Mexico, but that also backed up. We were stuck for hours.

The only way we found out what was going on was from truckers’ CB radios. Everyone was out of their cars sharing stories. Most people had no supplies. We gave some water and peanut butter and crackers to a family with a baby. John, ever the biologist, found the dried up skeletal remains of a goat and added a skull hood ornament to Joey. I was keeping a watchful eye out for snakes.

By the time we got to Phoenix, (remember that song?)  it was stormy and there were flash flood warnings. We were travel weary and ready for the last leg to LA. We slept well that night but woke up in a panic. Who knew Phoenix wasn’t on daylight savings time? We sure didn’t. We’d lost an hour!

Santa Ana winds pushed us along the way as we came into Los Angeles.  Joey’s steering wheel always started shaking like crazy whenever you drove more than 55 mph, so dealing with LA’s freeways was extra scary.  We made it to my Uncle Stan and Auntie Diane’s house in West Covina and they graciously let us stay the night.

We packed some tools into Joey’s front trunk, and drove him to the docks in Long Beach near the Queen Mary for the ocean part of his journey--shipped in a container to Honolulu.

I can’t remember how long it took for him to get to Hawaii—maybe a week? What I do remember is that when we got him, the tools we’d packed in the trunk were gone.

In Hawaii, Joey continued his service as a mini moving van. He transported our belongings through three moves near the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. And, he got more and more unreliable. When we drove over the Pali (part of the Koolau mountain range on Oahu) we’d downshift into third gear and encourage him with our best imitations of Scotty from Star Trek, “Aye Captain, I’m giving her all she’s got!” with Joey floored.

I became an expert at jump starting him, no small feat while dressed for work in heels. If he was acting up, I tried to park facing downhill so that I wouldn’t have to ask someone to push me, or worse yet, have to push myself and then hop in to pop the clutch.

I rarely drove on the H-1 freeway because I was always worried about stalling. More than once, John and one of his buddies, Ed had to come to my rescue on their mo-peds. One of our tax refund checks came just in time to pay for Joey’s engine to be rebuilt at Frenchies Shell station in Kakaako, a garage specializing in VW’s.

Joey chugged along for a few more years, but we finally decided it was time for a new car. We could afford it. Joey’s shortcomings: not being reliable, no power, no air conditioning greatly influenced our choice of the next car we bought.

As 1986 came to an end, we put a “For Sale” sign on him. It was hard to sign the title over to his new owner, but I patted Joey’s side and said good-bye.

Laura Keolanui Stark still loves a good road trip. She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

Adventures with Suzie

The problem with dogs is that they don’t live as long as we do. They come into your life and win your heart with their unconditional love.  They don’t get mad at you, or resentful. They don’t judge you or boss you around (most of the time). They are onboard with anything you want to do, wherever you want to take them. No matter what, they love you. Then you watch your canine friend’s body slowly failing, and you face the cruel responsibility of ending their suffering.

Today I held Suzie in my arms as we said goodbye to the little dachshund with a big personality. She pushed her nose under my arm as she always has to calm her fear of the vet one last time, and answered us with her little grunts as we let her go.

Suzie was a scrappy red head with a mysterious past. A lady never tells her age and we never really knew hers—12 years old? We were her fifth family. She came to us in a roundabout way that I detailed in a blog post: Hot Dog! http://starklooseends.blogspot.com/2010/06/hot-dog.html. She was a bit of a high maintenance diva who was notorious in our house for getting herself into situations that made us scratch our heads.

One thing that consistently got her in trouble was her appetite. If you were in the kitchen, she was under your feet praying for food to drop from above. She was so quick, food wouldn’t even touch the ground before she was chomping on it—meat, carrots, whatever you were working with.

Describing her as “not a picky eater” is an understatement. One day I discovered a half-eaten raw potato that she dragged from the pantry. Another time she ate most of a book. We asked her, “Really Suzie? We don’t feed you enough?” She just wagged her tail.

She was hospitalized twice for poisoning herself. Once for eating chocolate covered coffee beans in a bowl on a table. Once for unzipping the zippers on a backpack, chewing through the childproof bottles, and scarfing down headache medications.

She had no qualms about pushing her way in to eat our big dogs’ food. She cowed 85-100 pound dogs into surrendering their kibble. Yet, as brave, or brazen as she was with them, she was terrified of the vacuum cleaner.

Suzie had no idea that she was a little dog, and believed she was capable of doing big things. Because of the way they’re built, dachshunds are prone to back problems. She would insist on sitting up on the couch with us playing the role of a lapdog, but then also be just as insistent about jumping down. She had no patience to wait for us to carry her down. That resulted in her breaking her front leg, minutes after we boarded a plane for Milan, Italy.

Would you like to sign my cast?

Our son had to take her to the vet, and then dog-sit her confining her to a playpen with a pink cast on her leg. She wasn’t happy about that.  For that matter, neither was our son.

Another time while my husband was walking her and our German Shepherd/Lab mix dog she spotted a rabbit, yanked the leash out of my husband’s hand and gave chase through the woods and blackberry bushes.

Suzie, John and T-Bone walking in the park.

True to her hound dog roots, she was baying the whole time. The only way we got her back was for my son to get his car and rev the engine near the park. She knew the sound of his car and came to it, little legs pumping and ears flying in the wind trailing her leash behind her.

Dachshunds have a reputation for being stubborn, but I don’t think it is stubbornness. They are ruled by their noses and their ears turn off if they are on the scent of something—like a rabbit.

Another dachshund trait that held true for Suzie was burrowing. She liked to sleep totally covered. She would toss her blanket up in the air with her nose to burrow under it to sleep. If you let her into bed with you, she would burrow under the covers to sleep down by your feet.

Dachshunds also like to get into tight spaces. They were bred to tunnel into underground dens to catch badgers. Once they got the badger in their teeth, their owner would get them and the badger out by pulling the dachshund’s tail. They are tough and fierce, and that’s where their stubbornness to hold onto a mean badger was a positive trait.

One night we let Suzie out into our wooded backyard. When we called her, she didn’t come in. That wasn’t unusual. The problem when Suzie disappeared was that her first owner was abusive. She must’ve been punished for not coming when called. Sometimes when you called her, she thought she was in trouble and would get very quiet and hide. Eventually she would come out.

After awhile though, she still hadn’t come to the door. We started looking for her. Maybe she’d gotten through the fence. She’d done that a few times. If she’d found a mole, she’d dig with all four paws and her mouth like a miniature backhoe with legs. I was annoyed. It wasn’t easy getting over a 6-foot fence to get her back. But we couldn’t see her in the neighbors’ yard.

We walked the neighborhood with flashlights calling her and shaking her treat jar, and then got in cars to search for her. Hours passed. Before we went to bed we decided to look in the backyard one more time.

We have an old “shed” with four sides and a tarp for a roof. There was firewood stacked along the inside of one of the walls. John walked near the shed calling her name and heard a tiny whimper. He went inside the shed and at the bottom of the 3’ woodpile, he saw Suzie’s tail just barely poking out. She was so relieved and happy when he pulled her out by her tail.

We think she was going after a rat and got trapped. I don’t think she would’ve survived the night because the temperature got down below freezing that night. The next day the shed was cleaned out. From then on, Suzie was supervised when we let her out.

As tough as she was, Suzie had her girlie side.  She got cold easily. She knew where all the heating vents in the house were and snuggled up to them if there wasn’t a human available. We bought her sweaters and coats to keep her warm.

She always got excited about her new outfits, and would sashay like a super model to show them off. People got huge grins on their faces watching her strut her stuff through the neighborhood in her pink down jacket with fur-lined hood.

Her wardrobe included several Halloween costumes that also cheered people up.

She was most definitely a morning doxie and would start the day off doing what came to be known as “the happy dance,” when we woke up. She was simply happy to be alive and starting a new day. The happy dance was usually followed by a good wiggly back rub on the carpet while I brushed my teeth.

She hated the rain and would hug the dry ground under the eaves of the house when you let her out. But she loved the beach, and didn’t mind getting her paws wet there.

Suzie exploring the beach on Lummi Island. 

She was a great little traveler and companion on road trips.

When our two new young dogs joined the pack, she easily stepped into the role of alpha dog. They were at least twice as tall as she was, but if they started getting too wild, the old lady of the house would leap (watching a dachshund leap is hilarious) at them and try to nip them. “Knock it off you whippersnappers!” They listened to the grand dame and either calmed down, or took their craziness elsewhere.

Suzie’s life had a rough start. She got shuffled through four other owners: the abusive one; the elderly lady who taught her how to walk beautifully on a leash, but had to give her up when she moved into a nursing home; the family with the other dachshund that she didn’t get along with and misinterpreted her submissive peeing as obstinance; and the young lady who loved her but didn’t keep her.

Most of Suzie’s life was spent with us. The first time I went to walk her it didn’t go well. She tried to bite me. But Suzie and I had something in common. I’m stubborn too and eventually persisted until she loved me.

The last few years she had Cushing’s Disease and was on medication for it. Recently, she had seven teeth removed, but ultimately, her kidneys were failing. She fought through most of her health problems like a champ. She was amazingly adaptable and resilient, a good sport who took changes in stride. She loved living with us where she learned how to be part of a pack and got along with two cats as well.

Kona and Suzie snoozing.

Watson and Suzie napping.

Suzie checking out the food bowls between Jake and Watson.

Suzie welcoming Pippin when he was a kitten.

I will miss her quirky personality, her bright eyes looking up to me, her unquestioning optimism that there could be treats at anytime, and her warm wiener body snuggled up against my leg while I write on my laptop or watch TV.

Kona checking up on her buddy Suzie.

Thank you Suzie, adventures with you were epic! You made our lives interesting!

Laura Keolanui Stark can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com